


His Ships and Kings

by midnightdiddle (gooseberry)



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Archadian Empire, Codependence, Gen, Injury, Judge Magisters, Master & Servant, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-11
Updated: 2008-06-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 04:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12674664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/midnightdiddle
Summary: The hell is twenty paces by thirteen.  Noah knows this because he watches Larsa pace it often.  He cannot walk, cannot make his legs straighten to hold his weight, and so he watches Larsa move instead, and he is certain that it was--is--worth the price.The walls are white and empty, and all the furnishings are quite plain.  Larsa frowns upon it, always says, "It should be better," and the day he adds, as though it's a common thought, "for you," Noah feels a pain."It's enough," he says, and it is, for there are twenty paces by thirteen, and Larsa walks those paces by Noah's bedside.--Post-game. Gabranth will always be Larsa's judge.Prompt: June 11 - Final Fantasy XII, Larsa/Gabranth: Under orders - "As you wish, Highness."Influenced by Twain, Heller, Carroll, and Shakespeare. Um.





	His Ships and Kings

It is when he is lying dying in the back, Larsa's white-gloved hands upon his skin. Larsa's face is pale, but his voice is strong, and he is already the emperor Vayne and Noah thought he might become.  
  
"Do not die," Larsa says, as though it is some easy thing. But Larsa's voice, and Larsa's power, make any task an easy thing, even when it lies far beyond the scope of mere mortals. Noah takes a breath, feels his skin like an armor to be shed, and Larsa says, voice all the more stern, "Do not die, Judge Magister."  
  
Larsa leaves him there, for there are more pressing things than broken Judges and kicked dogs. Noah lies there, dying in the back, but he will not die without Larsa's word. Larsa is Noah's master thrice over, and he will look to Larsa, for Drace and Vayne and his own mortal need. And so waiting for Larsa's word, he will not die, with or without his master.  
  
x  
  
It is some kind of hell, this life. He's unsure of the passage of time, though time must pass, for the pain waxes and wanes, waxes and wanes. And, at times, Larsa is there, looking tired and drawn and bruised. And with Larsa there, gloved hands folded on the edge of the bed, it is a hell Noah will keep.  
  
Larsa speaks at times, when the pain is less and Noah can lean upon pillows, attending to Larsa's words.  
  
"I am, at times," Larsa says, "unsure of what to do, Judge Magister." And Noah is no Judge, he knows. He is too ruined for that, is a broken thing swept to the side, but he hasn't been forgotten yet, and for that he loves Larsa, and this hell.  
  
"Lord Larsa," Noah says, but his breath is faint, no longer comes easy to him, and even should he have breath, he has no words to say.  
  
"Would you support me?" Larsa asks ponderingly.  
  
"Always, for all that I am able," Noah says, and Larsa's smile looks glad.  
  
"That is no small thing," he murmurs. "You make me gladder than any other, Judge Magister."  
  
x  
  
The hell is twenty paces by thirteen. Noah knows this because he watches Larsa pace it often. He cannot walk, cannot make his legs straighten to hold his weight, and so he watches Larsa move instead, and he is certain that it was--is--worth the price.  
  
The walls are white and empty, and all the furnishings are quite plain. Larsa frowns upon it, always says, "It should be better," and the day he adds, as though it's a common thought, "for you," Noah feels a pain.  
  
"It's enough," he says, and it is, for there are twenty paces by thirteen, and Larsa walks those paces by Noah's bedside.  
  
On the better days, Larsa throws open the heavy drapes, floods the room with sunlight. On these days, Noah dozes in the sun as Larsa reads aloud, novel or letter or draft for the Senate. Larsa's chair is pulled close to Noah's bedside, and it is an old thing, an overstuffed affair that Noah remembers seeing in Vayne's old rooms. The seams of the chair are tearing, stuffing slowly falling out, and at times, when Noah turns to Larsa's voice, half-asleep, Larsa is picking at the stuffing, pulling it loose in tuffs, like the down of birds' breasts.  
  
"I'm a cruel master, I think," Larsa says when the floor is scattered over with tufts of downy stuffing. The sun burns Noah's eyes, makes him ache, and Larsa draws the drapes, sits with Noah in the dark. "My poor Judge," Larsa murmurs, and he sounds truly sorry.  
  
It is a strange hell.  
  
x  
  
It has been months, Noah thinks. The room is colder, a chill that spreads in from the window, and Larsa's clothes are heavier. Sometimes, when Larsa comes into the room, he is breathless, cheeks red, dustings of snow upon his shoulders, and those times, he smells of winter, of the cold of the north, like Landis.  
  
The blankets upon the bed are heavier now, thick and of fabric soft and warm to the touch. Larsa asks Noah, near daily (for it is near daily that Larsa comes through the door, to sit and talk and look, and remind Noah of life), if he is warm enough, if he is comforted. Noah wonders if Larsa would try to give him the world, if it would give Noah comfort. The thought frightens him, because Larsa understands no limit, and because all the world obeys when Larsa speaks.  
  
"I am comforted," Noah says, then, as he touches a blanket, something Larsa probably filched from his own bed, "Dogs shouldn't sleep with things so fine."  
  
Larsa looks more hurt than disapproving, his hands gripping the armrests of Vayne's old chair. Noah takes in a breath, hates himself for speaking so carelessly.  
  
"Lord Larsa," he begins, but Larsa interrupts him.  
  
"If you would care for something else, Judge Magister," Larsa says, and Noah weighs his own words carefully.  
  
"A new tongue," he says. "Mine speaks without thought, and distresses you."  
  
Larsa doesn't say anything, but after a time he rises from the chair and moves to the bed. He lies near the edge, atop the blankets, but the weight of his body is near Noah's, and to share a bed is a comfort Noah has forgotten in the years since his childhood, when he would share a bed with Basch in the cold of Landis winters.  
  
"Perhaps, between the two of us," and Larsa knows no limit, "they won't be too fine."  
  
x  
  
There is an exhaustion that grows within Noah each day. There is a lightness to his head and limbs, that seems to make him spin when the world moves, but his body feels heavy, as though he is tied by a force greater than gravity. And together, he feels peculiarly empty, as though the only bits of him that remain are those strands Larsa caught with his white gloves the day the Bahamut fell.  
  
Larsa lies beside him on the bed near every day now, and he speaks of many things, ships and kings and the pirates that fly above Archadia and her laws. Noah sleeps fitfully as Larsa speaks, too tired and empty to listen, but too tied to Larsa's words to leave. He feels in a limbo, caught waiting for his master's word, and this room, and this half-life, is a hell of the sweetest.  
  
"My poor Judge," Larsa says one night, when the drapes have been drawn against the dark, and a light magiked against the gloom. The light is flickering in Noah's eyes, a thin, wavering thing, and it is too like him, too like his life. "My poor Judge is killed, isn't he?"  
  
"Lord Larsa," Noah says, and Larsa's white gloves are warm upon Noah's skin, are tight about Noah's wrist.  
  
"I have been cruel, but I did not want to lose you," Larsa says, and the room is twenty paces by thirteen, and so empty with the two of them. "There is no life for you, is there?"  
  
"I would stay with you, if I could," Noah says, "if you would let me."  
  
And it is when he is dying, Larsa's hands upon his face. Larsa's kiss feels cool upon Noah's face, and Larsa is greater than any imagined, than any mortal had dared dream.  
  
"You made me glad, Judge Magister Gabranth," Larsa says, and these are the words Noah has always been waiting for, all his life, and longer. "You were the dearest of my Judges."  
  
It was the sweetest of hells.


End file.
